There are many strategies that can be used to create a favourable first impression. Name dropping is a commonly used technique that involves mentioning a particularly powerful/intelligent/popular person in a conversation and waiting for the listeners to form favourable conclusions about yourself. Unfortunately, it’s a fairly transparent strategy. Indeed, according to Carmen Lebherz and colleagues, name-dropping will probably make you appear less likeable and less competent - unless, that is, you make your association with the famous name sound suitably distant and casual.... Read More

Whoever thought that Psychology could ever be fun? Well, i think it’s fun but not most people think it is. So that is why i want to share a website with you. I stumbled across it when someone (@ijeanes) from twitter referred it to me. It’s the BBC website and it has been set up very well as an interactive and educational website. It lets you do a variety of surveys and games and provides you with background information on each topic.... Read More

People with more conscientious personalities, who have greater ambition and discipline, live longer. That’s according to Margaret Kern and Howard Friedman who combined data on this topic from over 20 previous studies, involving more than 8,900 participants in the United States, Canada, Germany, Norway, Japan and Sweden - many of whom had illnesses like heart disease or cancer.... Read More

Feeling like you are having trouble with your memory? Can’t remember those little things you usually seem to be able to remember? Before you start googling Alzheimers to see if that is what you have, perhaps you should turn to something you would not normally associate with memory loss; your diet.  You may not be aware that the food you eat can have an immediate impact on your cognitive abilities.  Research published in the February 2009 edition of the Journal, Apetite, found that a diet low on carbohydrates lead to poor performance on memory tasks.... Read More

Crying is something we do when we are sad, but i have often wondered whether there is any benefit to shedding some tears over something that has made us upset. Obviously when we are infants, we gain food, love, and attention when we cry but why do we continue to cry over situations, people and emotions throughout our entire life eventhough we receive no direct benefit? There has to be a purpose to the act of crying, otherwise we wouldn’t continue to do it throughout our lives. Recent research conducted at the University of South Florida provides an answer to this question. The findings suggest that crying is a benefit to us, but it depends upon the what, where and when a particular crying episode occurs.... Read More

It’s that time of year when we have all started shopping for Christmas Gifts. We rush around the shops, stressing about what we are going to buy for friends, family and work colleagues. We spend so much time at the shops that it just drives us insane so the pressies we eventually choose are just last minute rush jobs that we put hardly any thought into at all. Buying presents over christmas becomes a chore; something that we have to get done by the cut off date. Researchers at the University of Michigan have found that we should perhaps be taking a different approach to gift giving.... Read More

Holidays. We all love them, right? We spend our lives dreaming about a vacation and they are often seen as a luxury; something that we could do without in our lives (particularly during these hard financial times where our budgets become really tight, a holiday is the first thing to be sacrificed). After spending four days on an island just off the mainland of my hometown, Brisbane, i began wondering whether holidays have an affect on our psychological well being. I began thinking about the people who don’t get away from the buzz of everyday life and how their stress levels would compare to a person who detaches themselves from work and spends that crucial time with their friends and family to unwind and refresh their minds.... Read More